


A Brief History of the Academy of Magi

by stickmarionette



Series: everybody wants to rule the world [2]
Category: Football RPF, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Friendship, Gen, Intrigue, La Masia, Mentors, Wizarding Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 11:35:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10018652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stickmarionette/pseuds/stickmarionette
Summary: Josep Guardiola, Muggle-born, never got a Hogwarts letter. Some kind of minor mishap by the infamous quill, that was the theory, maybe because he wasn't born in the country.The kind of convenient mishap that made it possible for the Academy to swell its ranks with promising young students, particularly the foreign Muggle-born who didn't know any better, or so it was sometimes said by the enemies of Johan Cruyff, Principal, former member of the Dutch Council of Warlocks, former member of the Catalan Grand Chamber, and current thorn in the side of the Ministry.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For takethistooseriously, with my profound thanks. I hope I did your awesome prompt justice.
> 
> My eternal gratitude to aworldinside for heroic emergency beta-reading. I owe you (another) one.
> 
> This makes the most sense when read in conjunction with [where the light won't find you](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6710548).

 

“Johan Cruyff was not scared of anything,” Txiki Begiristain recalls. The Dutchman’s players, on the other hand, were. At least to begin with, [before he took them beyond fear.](https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2016/mar/24/johan-cruyff-barcelona-legacy)

 

"You know, you could just tell me things instead of playing cryptic games."

It was at least worth a try, Philipp thought.

"I could. But I'm afraid you'd get bored," Pep said, and contrived to not look afraid or even concerned.

Philipp gave him the unimpressed look that deserved. "Why don't you give it a go?"

"All right. What do you want to know?"

Not prepared for an easy victory, Philipp drew a blank. Where to even start?

The beginning. Yes, that would be logical.

"Tell me about the Academy. What was it like there?"

Pep's brows furrowed with unease before he could hide it. He took a slow, ostentatious sip of tea to compose himself. "Admirably direct. Right to the crux of things, as usual."

"You promised."

"I did not. But I will oblige. There was once a farmhouse…"

 

***

 

The farmhouse stood on the outskirts of a sleepy little Muggle village, which was itself on the outskirts of Paisley. The village had a church in some disrepair and a pub in significantly better shape, and attendances to reflect the condition of those holy gathering places.

Everyone there knew about the farmhouse. Perhaps it had been lovely when it was first built in the 17th century, a large imposing red brick structure looming over the countryside, but there were few traces of that left. Now it looked every bit its age, brickwork crumbling, any paint long since chipped away, the roof missing half its tiles. Any stiff breeze could probably blow it over.

Like a haunted house out of a theme park, little Joan Laporta thought. He wasn't much for those - they were a little fake for his tastes. For smaller children. He was older and brave and when his sister dared him to go _grab something from inside that creepy old house_ he hadn't hesitated.

Okay, he hesitated a bit. But ghosts weren't real. He'd be fine.

The rusted over iron gates creaked open at his touch. Joan hugged himself, shivering in the piercing cold.

_I can do this. I can do this._

He picked his way carefully along gardens hideously overgrown with weeds and somehow made it to the double doors without tripping over and with only a small collection of grass stains and cuts.

A comically massive iron-wrought lock barred the doors.

Joan berated himself for not anticipating this problem. On second glance, though, much of the wood was rotted through, and the doors were barely hanging off their hinges. He braced himself and shoved.

With a great groan and a rising cloud of dust, the doors opened a crack, far enough for Joan to get through. Inside was darkness and silence.

Joan said a quick prayer, took a last breath of clean air and squeezed himself inside, eyes straining to see -

The grass beneath him was overgrown and patchy. The crumbling farmhouse loomed before him, its doors barred by that giant lock. He didn't remember being inside or coming out or anything in between. Maybe he'd dreamed it all.

The only thing he knew was that he should leave and go back to the pub. It wasn't until he was standing inside it being berated by his mother for getting his new clothes dirty that Joan realised half the dirt stains were new.

 

***

 

"Ooh, I see. Standard Muggle repellent. They get in, they get out."

"Not so standard," Pep said mildly. "As far as I know the Farmhouse has never been enchanted to repel Muggles."

"That's impossible - " Philipp bit his tongue. How childish, to dismiss something unexamined as impossible. "Wait. Unless it's innately magical. But how - "

Pep smiled and did not answer.

"Joan became obsessed with the farmhouse. He was still looking for it when I met him years later, and he told me the story. It's amazingly similar to mine in some ways. My parents had friends in Scotland and we were visiting, just like he'd been visiting…"

 

***

 

_Smack!_ The ball hit the wall and bounced long; Josep Guardiola sprang into action to collect it. He got there just in time, adjusted on the fly and hit it back hard. Too hard - it bounced to the side and over the overgrown boundary into the next property, seemingly with a mind of its own.

Pep evaluated the situation at hand. He couldn't afford to just lose a ball. His parents would grit their teeth and get him a replacement but in some ways that was worse.

There was nothing for it.

The house next door looked enormous from the street, set like a jewel in the midst of the tidiest lawn he had ever seen, imposing red brick in a sea of ridiculously vivid green. Pep thought he spotted a flash of yellow that must've been his ball. There was no gate or fencing facing the street, but it didn't look anything like the run-down shack he'd been picturing from the descriptions of the men in the pub.

He set foot on the gravel path, and everything made sense.

The sense of welcome was stronger than speech - it was a fact, like the colour of the sky or the arc of a pass. He knew it just as powerfully as he knew that this welcome was not extended to most people. Just like he always knew when to step out of the way of an errant football. Like how he saw parts of London and Manchester that weren't there to other people.

The knowledge that he was not like the other children in Manchester had been with Pep as long as he could remember. His mama had explained what it meant that they'd come from elsewhere, and why no one else spoke Catalan. That part was easy enough to understand. But Pep also knew he was not like his parents, and he could not explain that to anyone.

The double wooden doors swung smoothly open as he made his way up the path to reveal a reedy man in a white cloak smoking a pipe. He had a strong nose and deep-set eyes -

"Looking for something?"

\- and spoke like the crack of a whip.

Beyond him was the most extraordinary thing Pep had ever seen - a cavernous hall, much wider and taller than the walls of the farmhouse, dotted with tables and chairs shaped like wood-hewn monsters. Bone-white arches crisscrossed the ceiling, which was lit like the sky outside.

Pep shook himself out of his daze to find the thin, severe man still staring at him. "Yes. I was."

He just hadn't known it until this exact moment. And now he did.

The man narrowed his eyes. "Interesting. What's your name, kid?"

"Josep Guardiola, sir. And yours?"

"You don't know? You don't know. Huh. That's - better, actually. But you know you have magic. Don't you?"

"I guess so."

One corner of the man's mouth turned up. "You guess?"

He gestured with the hand holding the pipe and a jet of red-orange light shot out, right at Pep. There was no time to duck, no time to do anything except think _stop_ and throw his hands up, whatever good that was going to do.

Except it worked. The jet of light hit an invisible wall, he felt the impact like a physical push, and it fizzed out.

"What would've happened if I hadn't done that?" Pep said, peeved and more than a little rattled.

The man in the cloak just smirked like a cheshire cat. "Yes, I'd say you have magic."

Pep stared down at his hands. They looked like the same ordinary hands he had yesterday, but he could still the phantom heat of the spell. "I - I'd wondered. But no one ever - "

"And now you know," the man said, with barely restrained impatience. "I'm Johan Cruyff. Come in."

Cruyff swept off without waiting for his response, cloak fluttering. The doors gaped open, and beyond it, the magnificent hall.

Pep was a sensible kid. A smart kid. He'd never needed to be told not to follow strangers. He scurried after Cruyff, and didn't even flinch when the doors slammed shut behind him.

Cruyff stopped at the center of the hall and paused, settling his cloak around him. Like the beat of silence right before the music crests, Pep thought, just as Cruyff raised a hand and snapped his fingers, the floor opened and a winding staircase curved out of a single massive tree trunk rose out of it.

"After you," he motioned to the stairs.

Pep hesitated mid-step. "What's up there?"

"You're what, 11?"

"13, sir."

Cruyff blew out a breath. "Late. No wonder."

That...made no sense whatsoever. "I'm sorry?"

"Answers," Cruyff said, and smiled. "That's what's up there. If you want them."

Pep stifled the urge to point out that this was neither fair nor reasonable nor even reassuring. He had the sneaking suspicion that smiles from this very strange man were rare and to be treasured like gifts.

It wasn't much of a decision, anyway.

At the top of the staircase was a disappointingly ordinary corridor with only one shabby door leading off it.

"Are we going in there?"

"Do you see anywhere else to go?" Cruyff sounded expectant rather than snide, as if there was genuinely more than one answer.

Pep treated it like a real question. Disappointingly, no other doorways or staircases appeared out of the woodwork. "I guess not."

There was a hole in the ill-maintained door where the handle had once been and it opened outward at a light push. Pep stepped through it and gasped.

He was standing in the foyer to a tall building, covered by a beautiful stained glass skylight in blue and red. A staircase shaped like the spine of a dragon wound its way up to the top.

Cruyff pushed past him more-or-less gently, walking very fast. "Through here."

Pep made himself follow. Cruyff led him a few floors up, to a cozy sitting room with a balcony, and gestured for him to step out onto it.

They were looking out from a spiraling tower perched precariously on a mountaintop over some very familiar terrain. Greenery and gridlines and brown and orange brick, and beyond it, the sea.

Pep had to swallow before he could speak. "But - I don't - this is Catalunya. Are we on Montserrat?"

Both of Cruyff's eyebrows lifted so high they were in danger of leaving his forehead. "Not what I expected you to say. How did you know?"

"I'm from here," Pep said quietly.

"You don't sound like it."

This part Pep knew off by heart. "My family moved to England when I was a baby. Manchester."

"Why?"

This part too. "London is too expensive."

"I see," Cruyff said, as if something about Pep's deliberate non-answer was actually useful. "Do you know why you're here?"

Pep had never been less certain of anything in his life. But there was at least a problem in front of him. "The house back there, it's been there for years. The men at the pub said it was abandoned."

"But not to you."

"Because - because it knows I have magic. So it looks abandoned if you're - normal."

Cruyff's face twitched. "Go on."

"This tower - the only entrance is from the house?"

Cruyff nodded.

"So they're - related, somehow."

Cruyff's face lit up at _related_. "I'll help you out: the tower is where it's meant to be."

"But the farmhouse isn't. Was the farmhouse here too?"

No answer. The silence dragged on so long Pep thought he wasn't going to get one. Then Cruyff tore his eyes from the mountains; there was something furious in them. "Yes. We were forced to move it."

"The same way my family had to move," Pep blurted, astounded by his own boldness but somehow sure that he was right.

Surprise rippled across Cruyff's face before he could get it under control, and then delight. "Yes," he said emphatically. "You'll do."

*

Josep Guardiola, Muggle-born, never got a Hogwarts letter. Some kind of minor mishap by the infamous quill, that was the theory, maybe because he wasn't born in the country.

The kind of convenient mishap that made it possible for the Academy to swell its ranks with promising young students, particularly the foreign Muggle-born who didn't know any better, or so it was sometimes said by the enemies of Johan Cruyff, Principal, former member of the Dutch Council of Warlocks, former member of the Catalan Grand Chamber, and current thorn in the side of the Ministry.

Cruyff wasn't phased. Enemies he had to spare. Students, not so much, and he preferred the Muggle-born because they were raw, natural potential, untainted by the poison of magical orthodoxy.

In Pep he saw optimal conditions: a bright mind, no preconceived notions, and a good grounding in the workings of the Muggle world. Everything else could be taught.

*

When Pep finally left the Farmhouse, he fairly flew out the door and back to the little cottage where his parents were staying and spilled the entire story.

His parents listened with the same attitude of gentle bemusement they always managed, although a pained crack showed through in his mama when he was finally through.

"Why did you go in there?"

A mad grin took over Pep's face. "Because it's bigger on the inside, mama."

 

***

 

"You parents were okay with it? Just like that?" Philipp shook his head in disbelief. He couldn't imagine - had never had to imagine what it might be like for Muggle parents to have their world upended like this. And not even with a Hogwarts letter.

Pep's smile went a little rueful. "They knew they couldn't stop me. You have to understand, Philipp, how difficult they found it raising me. My parents are simple, sensible people. They know when something's not right."

"Why did your parents leave Spain?"

"They were involved in - well, the same type of thing I became involved in."

Philipp considered the puzzle, cursing his own miniscule knowledge of Muggle affairs. "Politics."

"Mhm. Except they don't even think of it as politics. They'd put it higher than that."

 

***

 

Hard as it was to believe, Hogwarts had certain tried-and-true procedures in place for dealing with Muggle parents and Muggle-born children, built up over years of trial and hilarious, disastrous error.

The Academy was too small and too idiosyncratic for anything of the kind. Pep could only jump in with both feet and read everything he could get his hands on and badger everyone else for answers.

Kindly, steady Zubizarreta told him about packing up and moving to Scotland in a single night, and seeing the Farmhouse on a new piece of ground the next day halfway across Europe; through Stoichkov's angry rants about the war in wizarding Europe Pep slowly deciphered _why_.

It might've been overwhelming if he hadn't already encountered the single weirdest thing in the wizarding world. Cruyff was the most interesting person he'd ever met. And even weirder: he seemed to find Pep just as alien and interesting, even if that interest usually manifested itself as impatience.

"Put that toy away. Learn to focus," he'd say, when he found Pep practising his wandwork, never mind that contradicting all the texts Pep devoured. "Here, I'll show you. Come for a walk with me."

Another time: "Why are you bothering with Trimble? He's a hack, obsessed with meaningless, useless classifications and rules."

"What do you mean?"

Cruyff's bright eyes almost glowed under the candlelight. "All magic is connected. To think of it any other way is dogma."

Before Pep could lodge a protest, Cruyff picked up _The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_ and made it disappear into his sleeves.

"I paid for that," Pep muttered.

"Should've known better. Come on, I'll get you some actually useful reading."

Another time he had to duck to avoid a flying *Prophet* at the entrance to Cruyff's cavernous office.

"I'm not Albert!"

"I don't throw newspapers at students. Even Ferrer," Cruyff deadpanned. "I was disposing of rubbish. You just happened to be in the way."

Pep bent and picked up the offending paper.

_SPECIAL COURT FOR THE WIZARDING WAR HOLDS FINAL SITTING, STATE OF EMERGENCY LIFTED_

He kind of felt like throwing it himself. Possibly with magic. "Are we all to pretend that everything's fixed now we've packed enough Death Eaters off to Azkaban?"

Cruyff nodded approvingly. "At least you can see it. Two Dark Lords in the space of forty years, two destructive wars, and all this while the Muggles are busy killing and learning and advancing. _We_ aren't advancing. We just don't learn."

Pep picked his way through the mess as Cruyff ranted and dropped into his usual uncomfortable monstrosity of a chair. It felt like a sitting down conversation.

"So what actually happened to the Dark Lord? Do you know?"

"Of course I know. The only people who are confused by that don't understand magic." When they first met, this might've been enough to shut Pep up. Now it barely registered and he just kept looking at Cruyff expectantly, waiting for him to keep going. "Do I have to explain everything to you?"

"How else am I going to understand?" Pep said evenly.

Something about his tone got through and jolted Cruyff out of his mood. He slumped back in his armchair with a sigh. "People say I'm difficult. I'm not. I just want things to be right. I have my own way of thinking. If people don't like that, it's their problem."

He made it sound almost simple. And once it seemed that way to Pep too. But the more he learned about Cruyff and the Academy split in two between Scotland and Catalunya, the more he wondered.

"I know, Principal. I know you think that. But you can't go home. And for what?"

Cruyff's eyes went all flinty. "If you have to ask me that, we're done here."

"That's not what I mean," Pep muttered, frustrated. "What if we did more than talk?"

Surprise flashed across Cruyff's face and left a smile in its wake. "Now, isn't that why you can't go home?"

A part of Pep was shocked that he knew or cared enough about the affairs of Muggles to figure that out. Maybe he'd done it for just this moment.

"My parents don't regret it," Pep said slowly.

Cruyff's smile faded. "You might. Go do your reading, Pep."

*

"Sometimes I have no idea where I am with him," Pep complained later, in a moment of weakness.

Luis laughed at him, which was just about the least scathing reaction Pep expected. "Come on. Everyone knows you're his favourite."

For that, Pep bumped his shoulder and stole a piece of ham off his plate for good measure. "Jealous?"

"Who am I meant to be jealous of?" Luis said loftily.

The sentiment was so bizarre and unprecedented that it took Pep a moment to figure out what he meant. "If you don't like him, why are you even here?"

No one at the Academy escaped Cruyff's moods and the sharpness of his tongue, right up to the teachers. Pep had seen Vice-Principal Rexach storm out of that airy office muttering too many times to count. On a few occasions, he'd even been yelling his expletives at the top of his lungs instead of under his breath.

But he was Cruyff. And he was an attentive, devoted teacher of the wildest ideas, even when he was not being oddly kind.

"No, I actually admire the Principal a lot," Luis said. "I mean, who doesn't? He's a genius. I'm just not signing up for any crusades."

Something about the way he said it - "What do you mean?"

Luis rolled his eyes. "Bullshit. Don't pretend you don't get it. You're a born crusader."

He somehow managed to make it sound cutting and affectionate at the same time.

"I feel like I should object," Pep grinned.

"Don't. I meant it as a compliment," Luis said, and he probably did, the weirdo.

 

***

 

Philipp hadn't been able to help his indrawn breath at the name. "Luis Figo, right? I thought it sounded familiar."

"Ah. You did your reading," Pep said ruefully.

"He was your friend?"

Pep took a long sip of his tea in lieu of an answer and stared into the cup as if it contained the answer. "I - yes. The whole time I was there. Then we both got Ministry jobs after we finished. There weren't many kids left after us. No one you'd know."

"What about Xavi?"

That broke Pep's gloom, as Philipp had thought it might, and transmuted it into beaming pride. "Yes. He was the best of that bunch. Brilliant, and a real terror because he was so exceptional."

"Ha. I knew there was something off with him," Philipp said wryly.

"Uncalled for," Pep said mildly. "Xavi was as well integrated at Hogwarts as any of the kids we had to place at other schools."

"That's the most disturbing part."

Pep gave that the attention it deserved. "Like me, he really wanted to do more than talk. So we let him in early. Fortunately for us."

 

***

 

Pep had interrogated Dark wizards and suffered through tea with the Minister for Magic in the course of his work and all of if paled in comparison to being gently badgered by a teenager, at least when that teenager was Xavi Hernandez.

Tap, tap, tap went Pep's wand against the brick exterior of the Farmhouse, prodding the wards for weakness. It was familiar work and let him focus most of his attention on the kid working alongside him.

"How's it going?"

"Like swimming against the tide," Pep sighed.

"That bad, huh?"

"Worse and worse. Fudge is a joke."

He found a weak spot and lifted his arm for the spell only to find Xavi holding it.

"They're going to come for us. You know that more clearly than anybody. You work in that place," Xavi said. He fixed Pep with his wide eyes. Sharp eyes, too. He saw more than anybody.

All in all, it was infinitely more fun than talking to the Minister.

"Xavi - "

"Don't lie."

Pep waved him off, smiling. "I wasn't going to. Let them come. The time's right."

"Oh. So that's how it is," Xavi murmured, appeased for the moment. Then he jumped a foot in the air as a massive brown eagle owl swooped down far too low over his head. "Christ! Manel, you scared me!"

Manel landed on Pep's outstretched arm, looking entirely unrepentant, and held out his delivery for Pep to untie.

"Thank you, old friend. What did you bring me?"

It was a single piece of haphazardly rolled up parchment, containing just a single scribbled sentence written in the most annoyingly complicated rune-code taught at the Academy.

The roll of parchment fluttered to the ground out of Pep's suddenly nerveless hands.

Xavi was instantly at his side, picking it up. "What's wrong? What's happened?"

Pep had to swallow past a lump in his throat before he could get the words out. "Luis has been arrested."

_Of all the people - why him?_

Xavi's too-perceptive eyes filled with sympathy. "I'm sorry. I know you guys - "

"It's fine," Pep bit out. "Let's head back in. We have a lot to do."

As they stood before the great double doors, Xavi stared up at the house wistfully and blew out a long sigh. "I'm going to miss this place. I know that's not important, but - "

"Me too," Pep admitted.

It was just a place. Compared to all the other things he stood to lose, it should've paled into insignificance. That didn't make it hurt less.

 

***

 

The penny finally dropped for Philipp, shamefully late.

"It was deliberate," he breathed, stunned. "Cruyff meant for the Academy to close."

Pep nodded. "Very good, Philipp. You can see why, I'm sure. The school would have been a target of the coming War if it survived." 

"Better that it die."

"Not die. Change. Change is essential. The wizarding world would prosper if it could accept that as the truth."

Pep recited this like it was an incantation. Maybe to him, it was, after what he'd given for it.

_Wait._

"But that doesn't make sense. You were perfectly placed in the Ministry to help them disappear. What went wrong?"

"You're right, of course. I wasn't meant to be affected by the purge." Pep grabbed his cane in a white-knuckled grip that only got tighter as he spoke. "Things…got out of control."

"You don't have to tell me this part," Philipp offered.

Pep slowly unwound his fingers and set the cane aside. "No, I do."

 

***

 

"Hand over your wand."

Pep remembered staring up into the transfixing pale eyes of Mr Ollivander like it was yesterday. Cruyff had opened the door into this new world for him, but he hadn't had a key until that moment. And now they were going to take it back, with no one watching, in his windowless prison of an office.

He stood up but did not move out from behind the bulk of his desk. "May I ask what this is about?"

"You know precisely what it's about," Rosier sneered. He had his wand out and pointed at Pep. So did the other three stone-faced wizards behind him. Overkill, really.

"I'm afraid not."

Rosier rolled his eyes. "The Academy investigation, your school getting shut down - ring any bells?"

"I thought the investigation was at an end, with the Academy closing."

Rosier's face lit up with truly repulsive eager delight. He took a breath to savour whatever he was about to say, and that was how Pep knew to brace.

"Your friend Figo told us more about you."

Not what he expected. Better, really, because it had to be a lie. Luis was perfectly capable of choosing to save his own skin, but he would not have wanted to hurt Pep. Besides -

"Figo will be on the run now. You don't have anything on me."

Rosier frowned. "What are you talking about?"

"Do you think Cruyff would leave him be, after what he did?" Pep said mildly.

Pep would not upbraid a friend for doing the necessary for himself. Equally, he was also not the type to shrink from his own sense of what needed to be done, and Luis knew that too. He'd be busy vanishing as completely as a very talented wizard could manage.

"Ha! So you're admitting it," Rosier barked.

Pep shook his head. "I admit nothing. I graduated from the Academy and I'm a friend of Cruyff. Is that enough for you?"

 

***

 

Philipp had to suppress a wince at Pep's jagged laugh. "Funnily enough, it was. And you know the rest."

"Your friend Luis," Philipp said tentatively.

"Yes?"

"In hindsight, do you think he really betrayed you?"

Pep let Philipp see him consider the question and struggle with an answer for a long moment before he spoke. "Ask me something easier."

"What happened to Cruyff?"

He wasn't sure what reaction he expected. Certainly not a boyish grin. "Did I forget to mention?"

"You did."

"Some say when the Ministry came for him, he turned into a dragon and flew away," Pep said with a perfectly straight face.

"Really."

"Really. Does it matter?"

_I wouldn't have asked if it didn't,_ Philipp wanted to say, but the look on Pep's face stopped him cold. It was the same look he wore when he was trying to get some wild idea across and Philipp just needed to switch his thinking around to catch up. He wasn't being glib.

"You must have cared a lot about him," Philipp tried.

"He was almost as good at driving people away as drawing them to him," Pep said, all in a rush. "And far too dogmatic, for someone who was so into changing the status quo. He fought with everyone. He - " Pep took a deep rattling breath. "I believed in Cruyff more than I admired him."

Sensitivity was not his strongest suit, but Philipp had known Pep long enough to decipher that one. "That's not a no."

"No, it's not."

*

Joan Laporta always wanted to see the rundown farmhouse again. But when he made it back as an adult, he couldn't for the life of him remember where to find it. No one could.

If he had turned up just a few months earlier, he might have spotted two thin figures in dark cloaks standing in what would've still appeared to him as ruins.

The grounds where the Farmhouse had stood still faintly fizzled with magic. It would take some time for the traces to truly fade away. After that, there would be very little proof left of the Academy's existence outside the memories of those who had been there.

Pep was newly wandless and spotting a limp from a nasty curse courtesy of Rosier and homeless again. It should've been enough to ground anyone into the dirt but he felt unaccountably light standing back at the beginning.

Judging from the thunderous frown curved into his face, Cruyff wasn't enjoying the experience quite as much.

"What are you even doing here? Go before they change their mind."

"I had to say goodbye."

"You know I don't like goodbyes," Cruyff muttered. He stiffened in surprise when Pep stepped forward and embraced him.

"Goodbye, _Mister_. I won't ever lose my way."

Cruyff was smiling when Pep pulled back. "Did I ask?"

"Consider it a parting gift," Pep said. "If we never - "

The rest of the words stuck in his throat. He figured Cruyff didn't need to hear them out loud, anyway.

"I do. Goodbye, Pep."

 

 

 

“In a way, I'm probably immortal.” - Johan Cruyff (1947 - 2016)

Thank you.

**Author's Note:**

>   
>   
> [The Farmhouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Masia), as you probably knew.
> 
>   1. Joan Laporta was the president of Barcelona from 2003 to 2010. He was and is a prominent Cruyffista and a massive admirer of Pep Guardiola, who he hired as Barca manager.
>   2. Pep's real parents are working class Catalans who are pretty into Catalan nationalism.
>   3. There are a lot of references to famous bits of Catalan architecture in this thing. A lot.
>   4. Cruyff's career as manager and guru held its fair share of both success and being turfed out of town. It's a testament to his influence that even now the defining conflict among Barca fans is his devotees vs the anti-Cruyff establishment.
>   5. Andoni Zubizarreta and Hristo Stoichkov were both members of Barcelona's legendary early 90s Dream Team, which under Cruyff won Barca its first European Cup. Guardiola was 19 at the time and played in the final. Carles Rexach was Cruyff's long-time assistant at Barca. Luis Figo - [well, you know](http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2496426-luis-figo-to-real-madrid-the-transfer-that-launched-the-galacticos-era). You might not know that he was and remains good friends with Pep Guardiola.
>   6. Every time I remember he's gone it hurts. I'm glad to have had the opportunity to pay a small tribute.
> 

> 
> Thank you for reading. All feedback is eagerly appreciated.


End file.
